


Daddy's Home

by Nevanna



Category: Jekyll (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-02-27
Packaged: 2018-01-13 22:38:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1243126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When his children are kidnapped, Tom realizes that he can't use Hyde as a shield or an excuse anymore, and perhaps that's for the best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daddy's Home

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on 4/13/11. **Warning** for some violent imagery and spoilers for the entire series.

He should be afraid. The small corner of his brain that still insists upon dissecting and analyzing everything, insists upon that.

Just yesterday, he and Claire looked on as the boys played at being space dinosaurs in the garden. Eddie still had leaves in his hair when they were called in for supper. The next morning, their beds were empty.

In the moment, the anger heats his veins, crowds out the fear, causes him to narrowly miss another car that's tried to pass them on the motorway, and nearly drowns out Claire's startled, furious shriek: "Tom, are you trying to kill us both?"

His vision clears. "Hardly." 

"Do you even know where we're going?"

"The Klein and Utterson mansion, to start with." Tom doesn't know where his children are, or what the woman who is not his mother has planned for them. They haven't many leads, but they do have one, and they have allies who are working finding more. They don't have - he doesn't have - the ability to climb walls or move at super-human speeds; all of that vanished when his other self did, just when the two of them had finally gotten used to each other. Tom never thought that he would wish for the flickering electricity and the tingling under his skin as Hyde seized control, but they could really use him now, at the one moment when they have to accept that he can't help them.

And yet...

"What if we're too late?"

Some things he can't forget. Some things are impossible for his hands, his body, to forget. Aren't he and Claire living proof of that?

The memories didn't hit him at once. They seeped in a few at a time, in no real order, from the moment of synthesis. _"We are coming..."_

He'd spent six months suppressing them ( _no, I don't want to know, why won't you stay dead?_ ), just so he could carry on and pretend that his family were, or had ever been, normal ( _just so she won't_ look _at me that way anymore_ ). But the truth stands: it wasn't Hyde that held a knife to his friend and betrayer's throat and pushed him down the stairs. It's not Hyde who's left with the memories of blood sliding salty-warm down his throat, of bones snapping like kindling underneath his hands, of the interesting rainbow colors that bruises turn, of the supersonic mewling of a once-formidable man reduced to a pile of meat. So many extraordinary ways he'd devised to revel in pain and chaos without actually taking a human life, even when his victims had pissed and shat themselves, sobbed themselves dry, and were begging for God or the devil or something, anything, to end the pain. So many ways, and Tom is willing to try out a few of them on anyone who has hurt his children. He can't use Hyde as a shield or an excuse anymore, and perhaps that's for the best.

In the seat beside him, Claire starts to speak again. "I said, what if we're -"

Tom feels a smile curl across his face. "Do you even have to ask?"


End file.
